Articles: back-pain.
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Chronic pelvic pain is heterogeneous with potentially clinically informative subgroups. We aimed to identify subgroups of pelvic pain based on symptom patterns and investigate their associations with inflammatory and chronic pain-related comorbidities. Latent class analysis (LCA) identified subgroups of participants (n = 1255) from the Adolescence to Adulthood (A2A) cohort. ⋯ Migraines were associated with significant odds of membership in all 4 pelvic pain subgroups relative to those with no pelvic pain (adjusted odds ratios = 2.92-7.78), whereas back, joint, or leg pain each had significantly greater odds of membership in the latter 3 subgroups. Asthma or allergies had three times the odds of membership in the most severe pain group. Subgroups with elevated levels of cyclic or acyclic pain are associated with greater frequency of chronic overlapping pain conditions, suggesting an important role for central inflammatory and immunological mechanisms.
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Some patients with back pain contribute disproportionately to high healthcare costs; however, characteristics of high-cost users with back pain are not well defined. We described high-cost healthcare users based on total costs among a population-based cohort of adults with back pain within the Ontario government's single-payer health system across sociodemographic, health, and behavioural characteristics. We conducted a population-based cohort study of Ontario adult (aged 18 years or older) respondents of the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) with back pain (2003-2012), linked to administrative data (n = 36,605; weighted n = 2,076,937, representative of Ontario). ⋯ High-cost users tended to be current/former smokers, obese, and report fair/poor mental health. High-cost users (based on total costs) among adults with back pain account for nearly half of all healthcare spending over a 1-year period and are associated with older age, lower income, comorbidities, and fair/poor general health. Findings identify characteristics associated with a high-risk group for back pain to inform healthcare and public health strategies that target upstream determinants.
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In humans and animals, high-frequency electrocutaneous stimulation (HFS) induces an "early long-term potentiation-like" sensitisation, where synaptic plasticity is underpinned by an ill-defined interaction between peripheral input and central modulatory processes. The relative contributions of these processes to the initial pain or nociceptive response likely differ from those that underpin development of the heightened response. ⋯ Application of a distant noxious conditioning stimulus during HFS did not alter perceived primary or secondary hyperalgesia in humans or the development of primary or secondary neuronal hyperexcitability in rats compared with HFS alone, suggesting that, upon HFS-response initiation in a healthy nervous system, excitatory signalling escapes inhibitory control. Therefore, in this model, dampening facilitatory mechanisms rather than augmenting top-down inhibitions could prevent pain development.
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Workplace attitudes among nurses with back pain disability are usually unsupportive as nurses tend to rely on passive approaches like pain medications and taking sick leave to manage the impact of their back pain experiences. ⋯ The 14 messages on back pain given to the participants were reviewed to enhance clarity, applicability, and acceptability. Messages with similar meanings were merged, reducing the total number to 7. The revisions made to the 14 back pain messages aimed to improve understanding, acceptability, and relevance within the contexts and circumstances in which nurses' practice. This is important because the messages adapted for use in low- and middle-income countries like Zambia are equivalent and applicable to those originally developed in high-income countries.
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Case Reports
Adult-onset chronic recurrent multifocal osteomyelitis: A case report of a rare entity.
Chronic recurrent multifocal osteomyelitis is a rare autoimmune disorder causing inflammatory joint lesions. It has an estimated prevalence of 1-2 per million while adult-onset disease constitutes only 6.3% of patients. ⋯ We present a case of a 44 years old male who presented to the rheumatology clinic with lower back pain for twelve years. Magnetic resonance imaging of the lumbosacral spine showed ovoid areas of abnormal signal intensities along superior and inferior endplates of multiple vertebrae of the dorsolumbar and sacral spine. Computed tomography guided biopsy of L4 vertebrae was done. Histopathology revealed linear cores of degenerating fibrocartilage focally exhibiting small spicules of mineralized bone and fibro-collagenous tissue. He initially did not respond to traditional therapy. His symptoms improved with the addition of a Janus Kinase inhibitor. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case of chronic recurrent multifocal osteomyelitis to be reported from Pakistan.